WELCOME TO MY WORLD

“I first started painting when my grandmother gave me some paints. She was a prolific tapestry artist and when I went to stay with her I would sit with her in the early morning as she was working on her loom. She has had a huge conscious and unconscious influence on my work.

I began painting as a way of dealing with lots of difficult emotions and my struggle to deal with the world around me. It came as a natural and cathartic release. Art for me is about creating space for myself and using my creativity to find my voice. At times this can be intimidating.

I use drawing and painting as a form of self reflection. A lot of my work is a reflection on my struggle around feeling like I don’t fit into this world. My first painting was of a music artist called “Raggs”. The painting came together around a blurry photo I had taken at a gig. I began to paint an imaginary world around her image.

Sometimes flashing lights can give me blurry vision, seeing shapes that are no longer there. Like the image of a sunbeam through a car window, I see images in frazzled colours in blocks or blotchy patterns in pink, blue and yellow in bright tones and they travel across my eyes. I use this in my work. I’m obsessed with painting the face, almost everything I do has a face. When I paint a face it’s an emotional centre and gives me a place to feel my alienation from the world.” Big Jeff

2000-2001

I studied drums at ACM in Guilford

2002-2005

Contemporary Popular Music through Access to Music in Bristol

2008-2015

Art and Power a disability Arts organisation. We had a regular writer’s group which began in 2008 and is still running. We were involved in Spike Open, the museum and we worked with many other groups such as Dance Aware, Knowle West Media Centre and the Tobacco Factory. I volunteered with Dancevoice for 3 years and I enjoyed helping other people to feel good through movement therapy.

2015-present

Art in Motion was started in 2015 with several of the artists I had been working with. We have exhibited at Spike Island, the Arnolfini and a European project with artists in Madrid and Cork resulting in an exhibition in the Crawford Gallery and other venues in Cork. We continue to meet and have recently (2020) completed a project with We the Curious in Bristol. We have done workshops in schools and we have been operating the Tea Service taking conversations about art and the importance of creativity to different groups in the Bristol area.

2016- present

Independent Venue Week. I am the first non-artist ambassador for IVW, promoting venues, putting on shows and speaking at events. I was on tour during IVW in 2020 and have been on national radio several times in this role. I was due to visit South by South West in Austin in 2020 on their panel speaking about how venues improve their locality.

2017- present

Bigger House Films. I have made 3 imaginative short films with Bigger House and attended Edinburgh Film Festival (2017) and Sheffield Docfest (2018 and 2019). We were in the process of creating my next film when it was postponed due to Covid. With Bigger House, I have taken part in several online conferences on disability and the arts and I have taken part in a presentation at Reading University on this subject.